"Thank Heaven that wasn't necessary. Her doctor had been seeing her every morning, and knew she might go off at any moment. Heart failure. She was buried in Italy, at a dull little place on the Riviera, in the grave with her first husband and his daughter. Her own wish. She was all poetry to the last, a poet's daughter."
From the tragedy of Mrs. Rutherford's early death, the conversation somehow took a retrospective cast, and people talked of the murder that had happened a long time before. It is curious how long the interest in a murder may survive if the murderer has not been discovered. There always remains something to wonder about. After nearly half a dozen years the Provana murder could still bear discussion. People's pet theories seemed as fresh as ever, and were discussed with as much animation; while those people who had theories which they would die rather than divulge, were the most interesting of all the theorists, for they could be driven to ground with close questioning, as in the familiar game of "clumps," until they made a resolute stand, and refused to say another word upon the subject.
"I dare say it is quite horrid of me to think what I think," said one vivacious lady, "and you would hate me if I were to tell you."
"Give us the chance at any rate. It will be a new sensation for you to be hated."
"One thing at least I may say. It has always been a mystery to me how those two people could bear to live in that house."
"Oh, but you cannot bar a fine house, and your own property, because your husband has been unlucky enough to get himself murdered in it."
Here Chorus, who had sat disapproving and even angry while her friends were discussing the murder, chipped in suddenly.
"You don't know Vera," she said. "Her memory of Provana was an absolute culte, and she loved the house for his sake."
"It's a pity she kept her worship for the husband's memory," said somebody. "For the state of things between her and Rutherford for some years was an open secret. Everybody knew all about it."
"Nobody knew Vera as I knew her. She had no more of common earth in her composition than if she had been a sylph. People might as well talk scandal about Undine."